GEOSPECTRUM NEWS FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY • 2019
geography.osu.edu | 1
WELCOME FROM THE CHAIR Dear Friends of Geography, I am honored and enthusiastic to serve as the chair of the Department of Geography! For the past year, I have been in the role of Interim Chair after Morton O’Kelly was promoted to Divisional Dean of Social & Behavioral Sciences. We are grateful for his steady leadership during his third term and wish him well in this new challenge, as he continues to advocate for geography in his new role. Now that the Board of Trustees has confirmed my reappointment for a four-year term, I am eager to continue leading this great department, assisting faculty, staff and students in our research, teaching and service missions. We were lucky in this financial climate to add two new faculty in GIS and Urban Sustainability: Huyen Le (PhD 2019, Virginia Tech) and Yue Qin (PhD 2017, Princeton). Dr. Le’s research focuses on transport and energy demand, physical and mental health and data analytics. Dr. Qin studies the energy-foodwater nexus, using tools from integrated assessment and lifecycle assessment. I look forward to seeing all that these two women will accomplish here. Both are affiliated with the University Discovery Theme, “Sustainable and Resilient Economies.” We plan to continue to work with our alumni and friends to involve them in the department. I provide weekly email updates of our activities. We are deeply grateful to our many supporters. I give special thanks to Sherri and Brian Lewis, who were able to attend our Graduation Reception in May and personally hand out certificates to recipients of their generous
scholarship. This past April at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C., we were so happy to welcome more than 48 alumni at an evening reception. We will continue this practice in Denver in April 2020, so please join us if you are able. I would like to welcome our incoming cohort of graduate students in geography and atmospheric science. We have an intellectually diverse, engaged and vibrant graduate program. As the next generation of scholars, your energy and vision reinvigorate the Ohio State Geography presence in the discipline and our reputation. We hope you take advantage of the many extracurricular opportunities for research and outreach during your time in Derby Hall. We have three new heads of committees for the 2019–2020 academic year. Ningchuan Xiao takes over as Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee. Nancy Ettlinger has stepped up to lead the Undergraduate Studies Committee, and Kendra McSweeney is heading up the Personnel Committee. Many thanks to outgoing chairs, Becky Mansfield, Mat Coleman and Ellen Mosley-Thompson (after Ed Malecki’s recent retirement). In closing, I note that we had a mixture of new social activities under the leadership of graduate student Social Chairs Rebecca Chapman and Gabriel Zeballos-Castellon. My favorite was the Halloween-themed “Dress Like Your Advisor” contest. This year’s winners were Dakota Crane (MS, 2019) and her advisor, Associate Professor Alvaro Montenegro. I look forward to our social functions continuing this academic year. Sincerely, Darla K. Munroe Professor and Chair
2 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
OHIO STATE GEOGRAPHY BY THE NUMBERS
UNDERGRADUATE
486
GRADUATE
FACULTY
16
26
Number of Master’s students
Number of Undergrads in Geography Majors
400
31
61
10
10
13
2
Number of PhD students
AU18
AU17
AU16
AU15
AU14
AU13
AU12
116 205 280 346 395 438 486
200
5
Number of Majors
Number of Graduate Awards
5
Number of Specializations
Number of Faculty Members
3
Number of Minors
Articles Published
Book Chapters
Research Grants
Books Published
2
Number of Education Abroad Programs
CONTENTS
4
Our Students
6
In the Field
12
Faculty News
14
Our Alumni
16
State Climate Office of Ohio
18
Sharpe Innovation Commons
20
In the Department
23
Support the Department COVER: Camping under the stars and mountains before beginning fieldwork to collect drone footage and water samples in the Llaca watershed, taken by Emilio Mateo in Peru.
OUR STUDENTS JAMES WHITE JAMES WHITE graduated with degrees in Earth sciences and atmospheric sciences in 2019. His undergraduate research involved two separate projects — one that focuses on wildfires in the tundra regions of southwest Alaska and another that sheds light on the history of wildfires in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park. White discusses his research, his future and why Ohio State was the right place for him. Give a summary on your research and what it’s about. I was involved in two different research projects during my undergraduate career. One of them was at the University of Alaska at the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, where I worked with the Alaska Fire Service on the response of tundra fires — wildfires in the tundra regions of Alaska — to different weather conditions. We found that the most important variables for tundra fire spread were sunny weather and high temperatures, which is surprising because most models have traditionally assumed tundra fires behave like grassfires. The main driver of how grassfires spead is wind, but no one had really tested that on tundra fires. We tested it and found that it really wasn’t wind, which was really interesting to see. Tundra fire hasn’t been looked at so much in Alaska, but it’s really important, particularly in southwest Alaska where there’s a lot of tundra. It’s one of the most populated areas of the state because, while there are no big cities, there are a lot of Native American communities spread sporadically over the landscape. So, fires there can have a really big impact. The second project I was involved in was at Ohio State, advised by geography professor Bryan Mark. That research looked at the history of wildfires in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park. We used sediment cores that we drilled in meadows within the park. When we look at the charcoal preserved in those cores, we can date the charcoal. Using that, we can create a model where we can look at how often wildfires occurred within the park over time and how that’s changed. That can give us information on how it can change in the future and can be really useful for climate change research. The study is an example of how fire can really shift a vegetation regime and change the environment. The research group is continuing on that research to hopefully get both a longer record to more modern times, as well as more specific causes of that fire change. There are many stakeholders regarding wildfire. Why are they invested in your research and its findings? The stakeholder connection is super important, especially in my research in Alaska. Through the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, I worked for three weeks directly at the Alaska Fire Service, working with meteorologists and fire history experts, and this question of tundra fire growth came from them. In 2015, there were a number of wildfires in the tundra regions of Alaska, and I 4 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
think that really caught people off guard and scared a lot of the rural communities. Once I did my research, presented over there and worked with some of the weather forecasters, that research was integrated into their forecast plans. It’s already changed the procedure there at the fire service. The Nevada research fits into this bigger puzzle of paleoclimatology and paleo-fire research and gives us an understanding of how fire has responded through time. We’ve integrated all of that into better understanding of how fire can change in the future. There has been a lot of paleofire research done around Great Basin — like in the Sierra Nevada and in the Rockies — but there hasn’t been research in the Great Basin. The National Park Service is interested in knowing the unique ecology of the Great Basin itself. How did this research get started? The research in Alaska was funded through a program called the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hollings Scholarship Program, which allows undergraduates to select from a list of NOAA internships. I had been really interested in fire research and noticed the Alaska-focused internship because it was in a cool place, it was about fire and it was connected to stakeholders — so for me it was a home run. The first three weeks, I was just kind of learning, working at the fire service and trying to understand that culture, their systems and what was important to them. Once I had that, I was able to hone in on a specific research question. As far as my research in Great Basin, my freshman year, I contacted Dr. Mark because I knew undergraduate research was really important to me. His group was interested in starting this fire program as a side project to their larger research in Great Basin. Why was Ohio State the best fit for you? Going into college, I’d narrowed down majors. I settled on an in-between between political science and physics:
EMILIO MATEO EMILIO MATEO is a PhD student interested in water resources originating from glaciers in tropical Peru. Originally from Michigan, he is slowly acclimating to being surrounded by the Block O on a daily basis. Mateo became fascinated by mountains, glaciers and their corresponding water resources while working for the National Park Service in Alaska and Colorado. Prior to attending Ohio State, Mateo studied rock glacier hydrology in the San Juan mountains of Colorado to earn his master’s degree at the University of Denver. This research interest led him to the Department of Geography and Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center.
NEW INDUCTEES OF GAMMA THETA UPSILON On Wednesday, April 17, we welcomed 20 new members into the Gamma Theta Upsilon International Honor Society for Geography. Pictured above left to right: Front Row: Tianrun Jiang, Patrick Cleary, Henry Lent. Back Row: Elizabeth Lundberg, Xiaoran Wang, Ruiyu Tan. Not Pictured: Laurel Bayless, Seth Bell, Kendall Brooks, John Bumgardner, Casey Carter, Stephanie Crisco, Mackenzie Gilliland, Elan Kodish, Patrick McMahon, Claire Mercer, Isabella Niemeyer, Daniel Riffe, Jackson Shiffert, and Joelle Zuberi.
atmospheric sciences. I really liked the Earth system and getting a broad overview of not just geology but weather, climate, water, biosphere interactions and geochemistry. It’s like physics — there’s math and understanding and all this scientific work, but it’s also super relevant to policyholders, and I think it’s that connection that really got me excited. That narrowed it down a lot for me, because there aren’t a lot of schools that offer atmospheric science as a major. Another thing I’d say that’s really cool about Ohio State is the fact that it’s do-able to double major in Earth sciences and atmospheric sciences. I think a lot of people could do it. Now that you’ve graduated, what are your plans? I’m going to attend graduate school at the University of Alaska. It was really the only school I looked at that had a whole department dedicated to climate science and policy and working directly with stakeholders. Their program also offers a bit more freedom than other schools, which is another reason I chose it. My research focus is still up in the air, but I plan to find a really pressing question that needs an answer and go from there.
Mateo focuses on determining what controls the formation and movement of rock debris-covered glaciers and understanding their contribution to downstream water supply in comparison to their debris-free counterparts in the Cordillera Blanca. By integrating field hydrology methods and remote sensing observations, he assesses the impacts of spatial and temporal changes in glacier surface debris on downstream water chemistry and volume. In two trips to Peru, he has collected weather data from stations maintained by the Glacier Environmental Change (GEC) group at BPCRC, and taken water discharge measurements and samples for analysis back on campus. In future field work endeavors, Mateo will employ geomorphological techniques and terrestrial imagery to characterize the formation and motion of debris-covered glaciers. With the wealth of data collected by the GEC group over the past 15 years, and this new suite of hydrologic and geomorphic information, he will assess the role of debris-covered glaciers in a tropical mountain range for the first time. His post-graduation plan is to seek a position where he can continue research related to water resources while incorporating education or outreach. He is also interested in pursuing science policy after being selected to represent Ohio State at an American Association for the Advancement of Science workshop in Washington, D.C., earlier this year.
GRAD PLACEMENTS BONNIE BOUNDS (GEOGRAPHY, PHD) Visiting Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Texas A&M JAY LIANG (GEOGRAPHY, PHD) Remote Sensing Scientist at Cloud to Street, a flood-mapping and monitoring start-up in New York City JORDAN PINO (GEOGRAPHY, PHD) Will be working as a Data scientist at Athenium Analytics in Washington D.C. to develop predictive models in order to determine risk from weather conditions and other various environmental variables EMILY SAMBUCO (GEOGRAPHY, MA) Accepted a position at Liberty Mutual as a Catastrophe Analyst in Boston MA, and will be working with Research and Development to aid in modeling natural hazards as they pertain to insurance JARED SCHENKEL (GEOGRAPHY, MA) Associate GIS Specialist at Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) geography.osu.edu | 5
IN THE FIELD
SOHYUN PARK My name is SOHYUN PARK and I am a PhD student in the Department of Geography. Before becoming a Buckeye, I studied economic geography during my master course at Seoul National University. Combined with my working experiences on land use policy, I was driven to the interdisciplinary field of industrial activities and land use change in the agricultural sector. My dissertation project focuses on the ways in which socioeconomic and environmental systems are globalized under flow-based (or neoliberal) governance. Specifically, I am examining the effects of protection of breeders’ Rights (PBRs) on the transformation of the Korean strawberry industry. I found the industry interesting because it has been dramatically and unevenly transformed from a soil-based to a hydroponic-based farming system and from a domestic market oriented to an export-oriented industry. The Korean government boasts that the increase in exports is due to national technological development. However, drawing from literature, I would like to suggest that it is rather: 1.) triggered by the threat posed by PBRs; 2.) induced by subsequent global flows that are intentionally constructed by a growth
6 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
coalition consisting of local government and landowners; and 3.) constrained or shaped by the biophysical properties of the new strawberry seed. In terms of methodology, I trace the strawberry supply chain (or biophysical process) to show how the land for strawberries is opened for trade, revealing hidden links from technology diffusion to farmer practices and to exports. I attempt to analyze the globallocal connections using data visualization and regression modeling and look into local dynamics through interview. I expect the research will unveil the uneven effects of global environmental governance and will contribute to sustainable rural development. In parallel, I also maintain an interest in visualizing and analyzing flow data — e.g. intra-urban migration, global trade, knowledge network. Last year, Dr. Ningchuan Xiao and I developed an R package, “halfcircle,” which is to effectively visualize the bidirectional flow data. After conducting preliminary fieldwork during this summer, I am planning to take the candidacy exam before the new semester begins.
DEONDRE SMILES DEONDRE SMILES is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Smiles’ dissertation project focuses on a history within his home state of Minnesota surrounding disrespectful usage of indigenous bodies to generate medical, scientific and statistical knowledge; a parallel history of settler-colonial disrespect of indigenous burial grounds in pursuit of construction and development; and the ways that Ojibwe people in Minnesota have used both traditional knowledge and Western forms of knowledge to resist improper treatment of their deceased tribal members and sacred spaces. Smiles is carrying out this work in close cooperation and consultation with several sovereign Ojibwe nations in Minnesota. His dissertation fieldwork, which began in summer 2018 and continues into summer 2019, comprises several methodological approaches. During summer 2018, Smiles spent several months in Duluth, Minnesota, where he collected archival material from the University of Minnesota Duluth’s Archives. Smiles will continue archival research in 2019 at the UMD Archives. Smiles also plans to conduct archival work elsewhere in Minnesota, including the University of Minnesota Twin Cities’ Archives in Minneapolis, the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul. and the W. Bruce Fye Archives of the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester. Smiles conducted some limited interviews in 2018 and will conduct more widespread interviews and oral histories in 2019, including both Native American and non-Native American participants, in a variety of sites across Minnesota, including on-reservation and off-reservation sites. Given a long history of mistreatment and marginalization of indigenous peoples within geographical research, and academic research more broadly, ethical behavior in research is extremely important to Smiles. To this end, Smiles sought and obtained tribal consent from each sovereign tribal nation he works with in order to pursue his research project within their territories. Smiles also follows a policy of individual consent from research participants, and will be holding a series of community meetings on the reservations he works within to promote accountability and transparency with the indigenous communities he works with and is a part of.
MAX WOODWORTH MAX WOODWORTH has traveled twice to China during the past year as part of two research projects examining urban and suburban development in China. He visited Beijing, Tianjin, Tangshan and Nanjing. Each of these visits entailed site visits to different kinds of new towns being developed on the outskirts of major cities. The research has aimed to understand the patterns of expansion in metropolitan regions and the underlying political and economic dynamics that have propelled this outward growth of cities into their hinterlands. At this stage in the research, I’ve conducted dozens of interviews and collected development plans for more than 20 cities. Preliminary findings tell us that suburban growth in China is driven by highly uneven relationships of governing power and land disposition between urban and rural administrations and the ability of urban governments to take advantage of undervalued land at the city’s periphery. This form of urban land governance and development has marked urban-regional growth in China since the 1990s; but, the deployment of city-scale new towns in the periphery of cities in recent years marks an escalation of the intensity and speed at which rural land is being urbanized in spite of Beijing’s efforts to temper urban expansions.
geography.osu.edu | 7
IN THE FIELD DEBANGANA BOSE This research offers new insights about a high-profile policy relevant to urban research and planning worldwide: How does a policy applicable to central-city gentrification affect land use and socio-economic inequality among urban poor in the city’s periphery? Specifically, this research examines a process of commodification of land through informal means in Delhi’s periphery prompted by a resettlement policy. Aimed at creating a slum-free world-class city, city-governmentplanning complexes (CGPC) across India displace slum dwellers from the central and newly emerging investment zones of the city to its periphery. However, most displaced slum dwellers in Delhi’s periphery practice informal land use and sales in planned resettlement colonies, contradicting resettlement program goals that prohibit land ownership, sale and renting. Creation of an informal property market by the slum dwellers through commodification of land has transformed Delhi’s periphery into bustling settlements that attract nearby residents and rural migrants. I identify this transformation as an unrecognized process of frontier urbanization or peripheral urbanization that is driven by slum dwellers as opposed to large real estate agents, as generally perceived. However, the CGPC treats different kinds of informal use of land differently. For example, the CGPC cancels resettlement plots of those who leave the plots empty whereas ignores and mostly endorses unauthorized occupation and construction of canceled and vacant plots as well as informal transactions of plots. Existing literature on urban displacement, urbanization and slum-free world-class city-making critically engages with evictions and displacement while lacking attention to the impacts of resettlement on the spaces and people in the city’s frontiers. Shifting the focus from spectacular events of evictions and displacement in the urban core to the gradually urbanizing frontiers, this research sheds light on the experiences after displacement and governance of everyday practices of the displaced slum dwellers in the peripheral resettlement colonies. This research interrogates how the resettlement process transforms Delhi’s periphery and how displaced slum dwellers become entrepreneurial subjects who urbanize the frontiers, contributing to the visions of a world-class city. Recognizing the hardship experienced by displaced slum dwellers, this research views slum dwellers as active agents in peripheral urbanization as opposed to seeing them as victims of displacement. My research is based on 13 months of intensive ethnographic field research in Delhi and its periphery, specifically in one resettlement site, Savdha, which is located in Delhi’s western periphery and established in 2006. I also conducted research in Baprola and Dwarka resettlement colonies, which are
8 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
established after 2015. Methods include a mix of qualitative and quantitative ones, including policy assessment, comparing published land-use plans, policy documents and actual land-use practices, examination of census and National Sample Survey (69th round) data, as well as interviews with residents, NGO workers, and actors at multiple tiers of the city-government-planning complex and collaborative research with slum dwellers. This research introduces the concept of “autogenic displacement,” which recognizes that displacement goes beyond a spectacular moment of accumulation by the state in the central and newly emerging investment zones of a city and occurs through “ordinary” accumulation in the periphery by the less poor displaced slum dwellers. As slum dwellers experience emotional and often spatial displacement after they are forcefully resettled in the city’s periphery, I show how and why their politics change from efforts to claim rights to the city to efforts to use land as a resource to accumulate wealth. Commodification of land through informal land sales by displaced slum dwellers reproduces the regime of accumulation in the central city and constructs a dynamic class-based politics in the periphery. My research identifies types of informal land use as a criterion for redefining citizenship. Delhi’s CGPC punishes slum dwellers practicing “unproductive” use of land such as leaving the plots empty by confiscating or cancelling their plots deeming them “improper
citizens” while endorsing “productive” use that mimics regimes of central city accumulation of land through informal land transactions. This research engages with a theoretical reframing of the right to the city framework based on the empirical findings from the ethnographic field research in Delhi. I argue that although scholars have invoked critical yet sympathetic questions addressing whose rights, what rights and what kind of rights “the right to the city” entails, scholars and practitioners within the right to the city framework implicitly have spatially fixed practices of resistance in the central city. I argue that although the right to the city champions the voices of the marginalized, fixing the city in the urban core obscures expressions of agency among the marginalized at the spatial margins of the city. Drawing from the literatures on planetary urbanization and postcolonial agrarian transformation, I redefine and broaden the right to the city framework as a dynamic and continual process of everyday negotiation that extends across space and time, as opposed to confrontational resistance against a particular process such as eviction in the urban core. I argue that viewing the right to the city from the periphery allows us to acknowledge that placemaking through informal means by the displaced slum dwellers is both a productive form of resistance as well as a process of class reformation. This research contributes to the scholarship and debates on redefining urban displacement and accumulation, rights to the city, new frontiers of citizenship formation and governance over informality. Empirically, I document and dissect the experiences of displaced slum dwellers as well as the CGPC actors to explain a heretofore unexamined
process of displacement where the less poor slum dwellers displace the poorer slum dwellers in the periphery of Delhi. I also identify a major shift in the politics of displaced slum dwellers regarding urban land — a shift from a politics based on claiming ownership rights in the central city to a politics of placemaking by commodifying resettlement land. The commodification of land in Delhi’s periphery initiates a process of urbanization that transforms an agrarian-urban frontier. This research identifies types of informal use of land as an unrecognized criterion for the differential treatment of slum dwellers by the CGPC actors. Informal uses of land that are “productive” and comply to the world-class city making project such as unauthorized construction on vacant and canceled plots are endorsed by the CGPC actors, whereas leaving plots empty without adding value to land are canceled. Theoretically, I contribute to the scholarship on subaltern urbanization and urban displacement, and right to the city. I examine slum dwellers’ agency and ingenuity in urbanizing an agrarian-urban frontier going beyond identifying slum dwellers as active agents in the inner city slums, as generally researched. In doing so, I reorient the literature on subaltern urbanization in the intersection of southern urbanism and planetary urbanization, which provides fresh insights regarding a new subaltern frontier urbanism. I redefine displacement as a continual process that extends beyond the urban core and are often driven by the actors within the same community who are being displaced. I introduce “autogenic displacement” both as a theoretical intervention and a conceptual framework that can be extended beyond India. In the future, I plan to conduct global comparative research using the conceptual framework of “autogenic displacement” geography.osu.edu | 9
DEBANGANA BOSE continued from previous page to identify and compare processes of urban change that involve autogenic transformation where the displaced and the agents displacing belong to the same community. I also redefine and broaden the right to the city framework as a dynamic and continual process of everyday negotiation that extends across space and time, as opposed to confrontational resistance against a particular process such as eviction in the urban core. Methodologically, my research provides insights to three epistemological and methodological interventions in conducting comparative and participatory urban research. First, I propose that actors or an assemblage of actors can be used as a scale for conducting scalar comparative urbanism. Dehomogenizing a category of actors and examining their role within an assemblage provide fresh insights to an urban process that otherwise remain unrecognized. Second, urban frontier emerges as an epistemological category in my research. I argue that examining the urban question in the postcolonial context requires more interventions in terms of situating the process at the intersection of southern urbanism and planetary urbanization. Lastly, drawing from my experiences of doing participatory research, I believe engaging in collaborative writing with the research subjects is an apt epistemological tool, especially for being a part of the politics of patience. My community-based collaborative research project, Between Cityness and Aspirations: Seeing the City from its Frontiers, is in a nascent stage that I will continue in the future. During October through December 2017, I collaborated with a Delhi-based NGO, Ankur Society for Alternatives in Education, which develops experimental pedagogy building cognitive and writing skills among the marginalized in their vernacular language, Hindi. During my field research, I facilitated discussions with a group of young community members regarding their experiences of resettlement and organically identified broad issues on which the community members wrote essays, short stories and poems. I plan to continue this collaborative writing project to document the voices of the residents from a city’s frontier, co-author and publish the writings in their vernacular language, and translate and publish in English. I envision writing experiences of injustice as a strong tool of resistance against structural obstacles creating inequality and deficiency. I consider this writing project both as an innovative methodological tool for understanding the everyday lives of the displaced slum dwellers as well as a form of political and civic engagement to challenge injustice through collaborative writing.
10 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
IN THE FIELD BRYAN MARK With my graduate students and collaborators, I have various projects ongoing in the Peruvian Andes that have brought us to the field this year. In the Cordillera Central, we have focused on understanding how climate change will impact the water resources of Huancayo, a large city, by integrating field work, instrumentation and modeling of glacier changes, stream flow and groundwater in the Shullcas River, which drains from the Huaytapallana glacier to Huancayo. The project was funded through the PEER program, with USAID funding for Peruvian colleagues and students through the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP). Lauren Somers of McGill University followed Ryan Crumley (MA) and Oliver Wigmore (PhD) in working here, and she just defended this year. A big part of our goals in the field were presenting final results to public and scientific audiences in Huancayo and Lima. We were keynote speakers in a certificate-offering symposium in Huancayo and then had more science-focused exchanges at IGP in Lima. Now we are in Huaraz, Peru, where Emilio Mateo and Forrest Schoessow are focusing on field work toward their dissertation research. We have ongoing hydrological research in the valleys below the glaciers, where we've recently completed a NSF-funded project on groundwaterstreamwater dynamics. Mateo is focusing on debris-covered glaciers and has been sampling stream waters from different valleys to analyze back at Ohio State lab facilities (isotopes and ions, on instrumentation funded in collaborative NSF grants). He'll also be installing loggers to record temperatures below the debris cover. Schoessow has been leading the Mountain Drone Team (MDT) to map glaciers with drones, and joined Lonnie Thompson's ice core expedition to extract an ice core from Huascaran, Peru's highest summit (bottom left). Meanwhile, Gabriel "Gabo" Zeballos Castellon is in Bolivia mapping bofedales (cushion-plant wetlands) and surveying them for different properties all around the Altiplano (bottom right).
geography.osu.edu | 11
FACULTY NEWS INCOMING FACULTY
PROMOTIONS
HUYEN LE — a PhD from Virginia Tech — has accepted a position as assistant professor in Urban Sustainability Science and GIS in conjunction with the Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery. She has been selected to participate in the 2019 Training and Retaining Leaders in STEM-Geospatial Sciences or the TRELIS Project of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Sciences. TRELIS is a unique model for professional development for women educators in the geospatial sciences. YUE QIN — a PhD from Princeton University who serves as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Irvine — has accepted a position as assistant professor in Energy and Environmental Systems Modeling in conjunction with the Sustainable and Resilient Economy Discovery Theme. Her research focuses on uncovering the interactions among the energy system, the natural environment and the human society to plan for sustainable and resilient infrastructure.
MAT COLEMAN was promoted to professor with research interests in immigration law and politics on issues related to the U.S.-Mexico border, interior immigration enforcement, critical geopolitics, political geography, states and statecraft, geographies of power and resistance.
COMMITTEE CHAIRS NINGCHUAN XIAO was recently appointed graduate studies chair, replacing Becky Mansfield. The graduate studies chair guides graduate students through their programs, facilitates and leads the recruitment and admissions process, identifies priorities for department leadership in recruitment and programmatic issues, and mentors graduate students during their time in the program. NANCY ETTLINGER is undergraduate studies chair, replacing Mat Coleman. The undergraduate studies chair helps shape the program and expectations of the undergraduate educational experience, develops courses and maintains the development of curriculum to keep up with an ever-changing student dynamic and market expectations. KENDRA MCSWEENEY was named personnel committee chair, replacing Ellen Mosley Thompson. The personnel committee chair aids faculty through their professional development and guides them through promotion processes, as well as advising on next steps throughout a faculty member’s career. We would like to thank Becky Mansfield, Mat Coleman and Ellen Mosley Thompson for their service to the department. We appreciate the strides each of you has taken to maintain the Department of Geography’s excellence on the national and international stage and look forward to what will come.
MAX WOODWORTH was promoted with tenure to associate professor with research interests in china’s suburban new-town developments, energy investments in western China (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, urbanism, energy geographies).
APPOINTMENTS DARLA MUNROE has accepted the position of Chair of the Department of Geography. She will serve a four-year term beginning July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2023. OLA AHLQVIST has agreed to assume the role of Associate Vice Provost for Academic Enrichment and Executive Director of the University Honors & Scholars Center within the Office of Student Academic Success, beginning Sept. 1, 2019. He will serve a three-year term. GIL LATZ has joined The Ohio State University to take up the role of Vice Provost for Global Strategies and International Affairs within the Office of Academic Affairs. He comes to the department from Indiana University. MAT COLEMAN has been appointed as the associate director of Ohio State’s Criminal Justice Research Center in the College of Arts and Sciences. HARVEY MILLER has been appointed to the advisory board of EmpowerBus, a local pro-social business that provides micro-transit solutions to communities in need. KENDRA MCSWEENEY has been appointed as a mentor in the University Institute for Teaching and Learning’s Faculty FIT (Foundation, Impact, Transformation) program to mentor a cohort of new-to-Ohio State faculty during the 2019-2020 academic year.
AWARDS AND RECOGNITION KENDRA MCSWEENEY was selected as a 2019 Joan N. Huber Faculty Fellow for Excellence in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. McSweeney was also awarded a grant from the Mershon Center for International Security Studies here at The Ohio State University. The title of the grant is Illicit flows and socio-ecological transformation in Central America, which will fund research and writing during her sabbatical this year. STEVEN QUIRING was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Career award for his work with drought predictability and the role of land-atmosphere interactions in the U.S. Great Plains.
12 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
GRANTS AND RESEARCH DESHENG LIU is part of a new Center for Applied Plant Sciences-sponsored scientific team: Strategic Modern Approaches for Resilient Trees (SMART), led by Enrico Bonello from Plant Pathology. BRYAN MARK and JIM DEGRAND (senior researcher and lecturer) are part of a team led by Jason Cervenec at the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center that won an award from the Sustainability Institute on Ohio State’s Urban Heat Island. Elisabeth Root and colleagues have been awarded a $65.9M grant from the National Institutes of Health to address the opioid crisis in Ohio. From the news release: “The new Ohio initiative, announced today as part of the federal HEALing Communities Study, will use real-time research to focus prevention, treatment and recovery programs in the state, which has been hit especially hard by opioid deaths. The study will focus efforts in 19 Ohio counties.” ELISABETH ROOT and colleagues have been awarded a $65.9M NIH grant to address the opioid crisis in Ohio. From the news release: “The new Ohio initiative, announced today as part of the federal HEALing Communities Study, will use real-time research to focus prevention, treatment and recovery programs in the state, which has been hit especially hard by opioid deaths. The study will focus efforts in 19 Ohio counties.”
FACULTY PUBLICATIONS Assistant Professor MADHUMITA DUTTA recently published a book, Worker’s Movements and Strikes in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective, Jörg Nowak, Peter Birke and Madhumita Dutta (eds). 2018. Rowman & Littlefield International. Professors BECKY MANSFIELD and KENDRA MCSWEENEY, and Chair and Professor DARLA MUNROE were authors on a new paper, “It’s time to recognize how men’s careers benefit from sexually harassing women in academia,” published in Human Geography DARLA MUNROE 2019: Edited special issue - “Sustainability governance and transformation.” Roy Chowdhury, Rinku, Darla K. Munroe, Ariane de Bremond (eds). Special issue of Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. V38 June. 2019: Munroe, D. K., Batistella, M., Friis, C., Gasparri, N. I., Lambin, E. F., Liu, J., ... & Nielsen, J. Ø. Governing flows in telecoupled land systems. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 38, 53-59. BECKY MANSFIELD 2019: Mansfield B, McSweeney K, Lave R, Bonds A, Cockburn J, Domosh M, Hamilton T, Hawkins R, Hessl A, Munroe D, Ojeda D, and Radel C. It’s time to recognize how men’s careers benefit from sexually harassing women in academia. Human Geography 12(1): 82-87. 2019: Dillon L, Lave R, Mansfield B, Wylie S, Shapiro N, Chan A, and Murphy, M. Situating data in a Trumpian era: the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative. Annals of the
American Association of Geographers 109(2): 545-555. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2018.1511410. 2019: Vera, L, D Walker, M Murphy, B Mansfield, LM Siad, J Ogden, EDGI. When data justice and environmental justice meet: formulating a response to extractive logic through environmental data justice. Information, Communication & Society 22(7): 1012-1028. DOI: 1 0.1080/1369118X.2019.1596293 2019: Mansfield B. Mercury. In Antipode Editorial Collective (Eds), Keywords in Radical Geographical Geography: Antipode at 50, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. 2018: Rawson A and Mansfield B. Producing juridical knowledge: ‘Rights of nature’ or the naturalization of rights? Environment and Planning E 1(1-2): 99-119. DOI: 10.1177/2514848618763807 2018: Mansfield B. From the commons to the body to the planet: neoliberalism/materiality/socionatures. Forum on The Failures and Accomplishments of Neoliberal Natures, edited by Patrick Bigger and Jessica Dempsey, in Environment and Planning E 1(1-2): 58-61. 2018: Mansfield B. A new biopolitics of environmental health: permeable bodies and the Anthropocene. In T Marsden (Ed.), Sage Handbook of Nature (pp. 216-234). JOEL WAINWRIGHT 2018: “EPA’s Proposed Rule Uses the Idea of Transparency to Reduce Real Transparency and Delay Protecting Environmental and Public Health.” Environmental Data & Governance Initiative (EDGI)’s Comment on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Proposed Rule: Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science (Docket No. EPA-HQOA-2018-0259). Authors: B Mansfield, G Gehrke, A Hindman, L Fredrickson, L Vera, J Ogden, D Walker 2019: J. Wainwright. Forthcoming. “Human geography, indigenous mapping, and the US military: A response to Kelly and others.” Cartographica. 2019: D. Buck, P. Esselman, J. Wainwright, S. Jiang, and M. Brenner. 2019. “Concentrations and fluxes of dissolved nutrients in tropical streams dominated by swidden agriculture in the Maya forest of Belize, Central America.” Water 11(4), 664. 2019: J. Wainwright. 2019. “Capital and non-capital in Gramsci and Luxemburg.” Rethinking Marxism 31(1), 20-41. 2019: K. Asher and J. Wainwright. 2019. “After postdevelopment: Escobar and Spivak on capitalism, difference, and representation.” Antipode 51(1), 25-44. 2018: K. Mercer and J. Wainwright. 2018. “Science in ‘the storm’: reflections on politics and plant sciences today.” Human Geography 11(3), 1-10 JIALIN LIN 2019: Lin, J. L., and T. T. Qian, 2019: Rapid Intensification of Tropical Cyclones Observed by AMSU Satellites. Geophysical Research Letters, in press. geography.osu.edu | 13
OUR ALUMNI JENNIFER L. MANDEL Jennifer L. Mandel (PhD, 2001, Geography) is the Chief of Party, Haiti Evaluation and Survey Services (ESS) for the organization Social Impact. “Advancing development effectiveness,” the motto for Social Impact, Inc., the company for which I currently work, also sums up my own career objective. By getting my PhD in geography, I had hoped to do research that could inform development thinking by asking the “right” questions and finding the “real” answers. Seven years in two tenure-track jobs taught me that the kind of applied research I am interested in was not compatible with getting tenure in many universities. In 2008, I left academia to work full time applying my skill set to international economic development. For the development industry, in general, and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) specifically, evidence-based decision-making grounded in assessments, monitoring and evaluation is an important tool in designing and implementing development projects. Since 2008, I have worked for several organizations engaged in designing and implementing monitoring, evaluation, and assessment research to enhance development projects. These assignments involved extended stays in Haiti, Pakistan and Kenya, as well as short-term travel to many exciting places. I currently head a team implementing an evaluation and assessment project for USAID in Haiti. I could not do the work I am doing effectively if not for all I learned at Ohio State. Not only does my PhD give me tremendous credibility, I use the skills and knowledge acquired at Ohio State every day. One especially important and often ignored concept is “place,” as development thinking often focuses on one-size-fits-all silver bullets. This also includes a broad range of methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative) applied to designing and implementing rigorous monitoring, evaluation and assessment studies. The teaching skills I first learned as an Ohio State TA help with local capacity building and staff development in monitoring, evaluation and how to do rigorous research.
ALUMNI NEWS
A highlight of my career in this arena was working in post-earthquake Haiti building the capacity of a local team of 19 young researchers in evaluation and audience research. We ran bi-monthly surveys and regular focus groups to assess earthquake survivors’ humanitarian information needs. Initially our work was only intended to inform a 20-minute daily radio program providing humanitarian information to the affected population to ensure that it was responsive to their needs. However, it quickly became apparent that our work was useful to the humanitarian-response community more broadly. So, we started publishing short bi-weekly reports that were widely circulated and informed many organizations’ strategic communications. USAID later funded us to do other kinds of research including evaluating the effectiveness of the humanitarian community’s cholera prevention and treatment communications. They also funded us to help our team develop into an independent Haitian research firm that could work to international standards. The tools we developed for this work have since been adapted and used in many other crisis-response situations. For me, this is truly enhancing development effectiveness.
FLETCHER CHMARA-HUFF (PhD, geography, ’11) has been appointed to assistant professor at Temple University. He has been working with their Dance Department for the past five years to create new performances, and now a symposium, about global waters issues titled “Artists, Activists and Scientists in Conversation Around Water.” JILL COLEMAN (MA, PhD, geography, ’00 and ’06) was promoted to professor in 2017 in the Department of Geography at Ball State University. In fall 2018, she was appointed associate dean for Ball State’s College of Sciences and Humanities, saying that she thoroughly enjoys this new opportunity. JED DEBRUIN (BA, geography, ’17) recently defended his master’s thesis from geography at the University of West Virginia (advisor Bradley Wilson) and will be starting a PhD in geography at the University of Kentucky in the autumn 2019 semester. ALISTAIR FRASER (PhD, geography, ’06) is the new European editor of the journal Human Geography.
14 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF GEOGRAPHERS ANNUAL MEETING In April of 2019, the Department of Geography welcomed more than 45 faculty, alumni and current students at the American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. This reception was the first in several years to celebrate Ohio State geography and the people who’ve made it and continue to make it an exceptional program. The reception was open to all Ohio State geography alumni, and we anticipate the turnout for the AAG Annual Meeting in Denver 2020 will be even bigger! We hope to see you there.
LINDSAY HOSTETLER (BS, geographic information science, ’18) is a mapping technician for the Franklin County Engineers Office. ANDREW BUCK MICHAEL (BS, atmospheric sciences, ’08), JAKE CARR (PhD, geography, ’17) and NAOMI ADANIYA (MA, GIS & Spatial Analysis, ’13 and an MPH & PhD Public Health) returned to geography to participate in the Sharpe Innovations Commons Workshop Series. Beginning in Autumn 2018, speakers from the private sector came and shared how their education in geography paved the way to their current careers. AARON WILSON (MA, PhD, atmospheric sciences, ’10 and ’13) member of at the State Climate Office of Ohio, was quoted in The Columbus Dispatch about Ohio’s changing weather patterns and their impact on agriculture and flooding. “There have always been weather issues. If you look at every generation, you can look at a couple key moments. ... It’s romanticized pretty easily. Milestones in our life are marked by those events.” SANDY WONG (MA, geography, ’13) is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Florida State University.
geography.osu.edu | 15
STATE CLIMATE OFFICE OF OHIO Accurate climate information, education and interpretation not only inform policymakers and all sectors of Ohio’s economy, but also enhance the quality of life, health, food and water security, and economic prosperity of all Ohioans. The State Climate Office of Ohio (SCOO) connects Ohioans with transformative climate information and functions as a partnership between the Department of Geography, the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center and Ohio State University Extension. Information about SCOO can be found at climate.osu.edu. This year, the SCOO made great strides in its effort to answer one of the most pressing questions facing Ohioans today: How will Ohio adapt and build resilience to actual and future climate disruptions that are likely to occur more frequently in a warmer world? As part of SCOO’s mission to engage policymakers, stakeholders and everyday Ohioans with the impacts of climate change, SCOO engaged in many events this year to heighten awareness and demonstrate the relevance of climate research. SEPTEMBER 2018 For the third consecutive year, SCOO staffed a booth at the Farm Science Review held at Ohio State’s Molly Caren Agricultural Center in Madison County. SCOO released its Field Application Resource Monitor (FARM) app in September 2018. This app helps farmers conform with Ohio Department of Agriculture regulations regarding the application of granular and liquid fertilizer, which prohibit the application of fertilizers within one to two days of a high-probability of significant precipitation. The FARM app ties the precipitation forecast directly to specific, user-defined locations, making it easy for a farmer to determine if application is permitted. OCTOBER 2018 SCOO hosted Kentucky State Climatologist and Director of the
16 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
Kentucky Climate Center, Stu Foster (an Ohio State geography alum) for a one-day, intensive meeting with Ohio State administrators. Foster described the process of developing the Kentucky Climate Center and how it benefits his department (geography), the school (Western Kentucky University) and the state of Kentucky. Using this meeting as a standard to model future growth of SCOO, researchers were excited to learn, engage and develop a plan for development and outreach. DECEMBER 2018 The Columbus Climate Adaptation Plan was released — a culmination of four years of work in collaboration with the city of Columbus. Development of this plan and the report, Climate Change in Columbus Ohio, were the result of a collaboration between the Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center (BPCRC), the city of Columbus, Great Lakes Integrated Sciences + Assessments Center (GLISA), Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC), the Columbus Foundation, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, with contributions from more than 100 individuals. MAY 2019 SCOO received a two-year grant from the Ohio State Sustainability Institute to develop an environmental monitoring network for the Columbus campus. This network will focus on monitoring the urban heat island effect in the campus area. JUNE 2019 Partnering with the Midwest Regional Climate Center and NOAA, SCOO hosted the first Ohio Climate Services Summit. This two-day meeting brought together a wide range of climateinterested people from around the state to discuss services currently available to assist with climate related decisions and planning. Among the groups represented by the more than 70 attendees were the cities of Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland and Toledo, MORPC, the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, the Ohio
Department of Agriculture, the Ohio Farm Bureau and all four of the National Weather Service forecast offices with responsibility in Ohio.
ONGOING ACTIVITIES WEEKLY HYDROCLIMATE ASSESSMENTS During the growing season, Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center researcher Aaron Wilson, in conjunction with SCOO, distributes video presentations that review the current state and near term to seasonal outlooks for water in the environment across Ohio. These videos are available at climate.osu.edu and on YouTube. QUARTERLY CLIMATE REPORTS These two-page summaries of climate across Ohio are informative, giving a brief presentation of temperature and precipitation while presenting additional topics of interest and a projected outlook. These quick guides are available at climate.osu.edu. COORDINATING DROUGHT MONITOR INPUT FOR OHIO On a weekly basis, SCOO coordinates input from people around the state who are interested/involved in drought in Ohio (National Weather Service forecast offices, river forecast center, extension agents, National Forest Service, Ohio Emergency Management Agency, Ohio Department of Agriculture) and forward a summary of that input to the authors of the U.S. Drought Monitor. UPDATING OARDC STATIONS SCOO has installed additional temperature sensors at each of the 10 stations in Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center Ag Weather Network. Each station now records temperature at 0.5 m, 1.5 m and 3.0 m giving us the ability to determine when temperature inversions are present at those locations. This information is critical for farmers deciding when to apply herbicides and pesticides.
Jason Cervenec in the SCOO booth at Farm Science Review.
DEPARTMENT AFFILIATED CENTERS Geography faculty and students engage in a wide variety of research topic areas, and interdisciplinary activities that broaden our understanding of the world as we know it. As educators and researchers, our faculty are affiliated with a variety of centers and colleges across the university to further the discipline, education and research in the varied fields of geography. • • • • • • • • • • •
Center for Urban and Regional Analysis Byrd Polar Research Center Sustainability Institute Translational Data Analytics College of Public Health Institute for Population Research Center for Latin American Studies Mershon Center for International Security Studies Race, Ethnicity, Gender/Sex and Disparities in Modern Society faculty cluster East Asian Studies Center Agricultural, Environmental & Development Economics
geography.osu.edu | 17
SHARPE INNOVATION COMMONS In its inaugural year, the Gary and Connie Sharpe Innovation Commons engaged geography students to close the gap between research, education and innovation of ideas across this vast discipline. The promise of the commons was to encourage entrepreneurial possibilities, impart global knowledge and hone the ability to solve practical problems. In the Sharpe Innovation Commons, we embrace that forward thinking mission and provide resources and programs to engage students on a personal and fundamental level. As part of our engagement and student outreach programming, the Department of Geography invited speakers from the across disciplines in the private sector to discuss their educational background in geography and how the paths were shaped from their education, their experience and how geography played an integral role their current careers. SEPT. 5, 2018: Andrew Buck Michael, (BS, 2008, Atmospheric Sciences), Meteorologist, WSYX & WTTE-TV (Columbus, OH) OCT. 1, 2018: Jake Carr (PhD, 2017, Geography), Assistant Director in Research & Modeling Services, Department for Enterprises Risk Solutions, Moody’s Analytics A Compass for Career Wayfinding? NOV. 6, 2018: Naomi Adaniya (MA, 2013, GIS & Spatial Analysis, & M.P.H. & PhD Public Health), Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of Justice Criminal Division Fraud Section The Evolving Role of Data Analytics in Combatting Health Care Fraud and the Opioid Epidemic FEB. 7, 2019: Torrin Hultgren, GIS Systems Architect at CSRA, Inc. Perspectives on the U.S. EPA Geospatial Program MARCH 5, 2019: Lawrence Joseph, Market Planning Manager, Kentucky Fried Chicken-Corporate The Role of Big Data in Retail Location Decision Making APRIL 10, 2019: Joseph Palis, University of the Philippines, Film Geographies and Cartographic Cinema In addition to the speaker series offered throughout the year, the Sharpe Innovation commons also awarded four seed grants designed to provide funding for students to facilitate their research and engagement. There are several elements that are key for the awarding of these seed grants. The first is that the focus of the researcher or research team be built around students, both undergraduates and graduates. The second is that the research is interdisciplinary. This can be across geography or across campus. The third is that the research must demonstrate innovation in the field.
18 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
The recipients for the autumn 2018 and spring 2019 seed grant funding were exemplary students with research encompassing wide ranges of research areas. Each research group received $5000 to further their research agendas. JAMES WHITE is an undergraduate majoring in atmospheric sciences. This project used macroscale charcoal counts in meadow cores from Great Basin National Park (GBNP) as a proxy for local wildfire activity over the past 10,000 years. This work would be the first charcoal analysis conducted within the Great Basin region and one of the first analyses attempted using a meadow soil core rather than a lake core. Comparing these results to other paleoclimate work would then help establish local factors of wildfire activity and help predict how these factors would change in the future. Locally, this information would be useful to GBNP as it looks to improve wildfire management in the future. His team of researchers included Nischay Soni (environmental science undergraduate), Forrest Schoessow (geography graduate student), and Emily Sambuco (atmospheric sciences graduate student). FORREST SCHOESSOW, a PhD student in geography, was awarded a seed grant in both autumn and spring semesters. The over-arching project proposed that continuous geospatial monitoring of mass balance changes in glacier
environments using digital elevation models (DEMs) would be vital to understanding the past and predicting the future of glacier retreat, resource availability and constraining changes in the surrounding landscapes. The team aimed to continue their timely and critical observation of tropical glaciers mass balance and further enhance the capabilities of the homegrown Drone–GISc/Geography community here at Ohio State. His team of researchers included Andrea Stanic (geography undergraduate – AU18 and SP19), Nischay Sone (environment, economy, development, and sustainability undergraduate – AU18 and SP19), Even Vega (computer science engineering undergraduate – AU18 and SP19), Joseph Warner (mechanical engineering undergraduate – AU18), and Dean Langenkamp (welding engineering undergraduate – AU18) Aswathnarayan Radhakrishnan (computer science and engineering graduate student – SP19), Danny Walton (electrical and computer engineering undergraduate – SP19), Michael Zhan (computer science and engineering undergraduate – SP19), Jacob Langermeier (aerospace engineering – SP19), Joseph Affourtit (physics undergraduate – SP19). MAEVE SCULLY is an undergraduate in geography and Geographic Information Science. Scully’s project aimed to answer the following question: how can photography effectively be used as a geographic tool of analysis
when exploring urban gentrification patterns? While past researchers have utilized art in a way of defining a particular space, she wanted to combine art with quantitative analysis methods to instead define a spatial pattern. This project would be significant in opening a potential door for future interdisciplinary research and legitimizing a new methodology in the discipline. The Gary and Connie Sharpe Innovation Commons provides the space, technology, resources and faculty guidance to support three pillars of geography career preparedness: technical depth, creativity and innovation, and global knowledge and expertise. We encourage all of our students to think big and to use geography as a tool for setting new standards and reaching new heights. The Sharpe Innovation Commons is a single cog of the wheel for innovation and the Department of Geography is excited to make that journey with all our excellent students.
geography.osu.edu | 19
IN THE DEPARTMENT GEOWEEK 2018 As part of Geography Awareness Week, the Department of Geography hosted GEO Week in November 2018 with a focus on civil rights. Along with the traditional GEO Week events, including GEOguesser, GISday and speaker presentations, we included a new program: the Graduate Student Research Forum. On Nov. 15, 12 of our graduate students presented their research and work through presentations on topics such as food justice and urban political ecology; urban transportation models; social media connectivity of people and places through movement; and visualizing flows to understand movement of populations and commodities.
GEO Week's Graduate Student Forum Poster presenters left to right, Claire Jones, Zhiying Li, Jiayong Liang, Ning Zhang, Zachary Leasor and Jordan Pino. Photo: Jocelyn Nevel
ELDAAG This year's meeting of the East Lakes Division of the American Association of Geographers (ELDAAG) was held Oct. 18–19 at Ohio Northern University in Ada, Ohio. The department sent 14 people, and it was a great success all around. Ohio State took two of the 16 2018 ELDAAG student awards this year. Blake Acton received the second place master's paper award, and Ariana HallReinhard took first place for her PhD paper.
STUDY ABROAD Stavros Constantinou led a group of 15 students on the second Geography of the European Union (Geog 3753.02) education abroad course in Cyprus from May 4 to June 1. In addition to formal classroom presentations, students had the opportunity to participate in a variety of structured educational activities, including visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Archaeological Park and the wilderness area of the Akamas Peninsula. They also got the chance to walk along the Green Line dividing the Republic of Cyprus from the Turkish occupied area.
20 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
GRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT AWARDS
E. WILLARD & RUBY S. MILLER FELLOWSHIP AWARD The highest recognition the department can bestow on a graduate student. This award is given in recognition of outstanding graduate students on the basis of demonstrated success in writing, scholarship and potential to become leaders as professional geographers. Chengfi He, Jin Lee
GARY L. SHARPE SCHOLARSHIP FOR OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATES This award provides need-based scholarships in the Department of Geography with preference given to students from she State of Ohio who demonstrate excellence in their designated program of study. Jason Kindinger, Isabella Niemeyer
FENBURR TRAVEL SCHOLARSHIP FOR OUTSTANDING GRADUATE AWARD This award is given to graduate students to facilitate professional development activities related to the conduct or dissemination of research, such as training workshops, conferences and fieldwork. Arianna Hall-Reinhard, Yuechun Wang T.R. LAKSHMANAN & LATA CHATTERJEE AWARD This award recognizes a distinguished PhD student in geography who is either from the Global South region (Asia, Africa or Latin America) or carrying out research on the Global South, focused on issues of benefit to humanity and has demonstrated professional promise. Rohit Mukherjee, Sohyun Park
FENBURR SCHOLARSHIP FOR WOMEN AND UNDERREPRESENTED GROUPS The undergraduate Fenburr scholarship is intended to aid students that are underrepresented in the discipline of geography. Victor Mikus CC HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL AWARD This scholarship is awarded to an outstanding student in geography. Maeve Scully ARTHUR H. ROBINSON SCHOLARSHIP OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE GEOGRAPHY MAJOR Given to support research by exemplary undergraduate students in the discipline of geography. Xiaoran Wang
RAYNER SCHOLARSHIP FOR FIELD WORK This award supports graduate student fieldwork and is awarded to students who have been recommended by a majority of the faculty in the Department of Geography. Jenny McGibbon
EDWARD J. “NED” TAAFFE SCHOLARSHIP – OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE IN ASP Given to support research by exemplary undergraduate students in the discipline of atmospheric sciences. James White, Joshua Steiner
PRESIDENTIAL FELLOWSHIPS The Presidential Fellowship is the most prestigious award given by the Graduate School. Recipients of this award embody the highest standards of scholarship in the full range of Ohio State’s graduate programs. This fellowships are awarded competitively and provide one year of full-time financial support. Sam Kay, Jerry Zou
LEWIS FAMILY SCHOLARSHIP This scholarship provides merit-based awards to undergraduates in the Department of Geography with a preference given to candidates majoring in geographic information sciences with interests in cartography. Wyatt Guthrie, Ruiyu Tan, Mackenzie Gilliland, Alexander Bryan
ENGIE-AXIUM SCHOLARSHIP AWARD The Engie-Axium Scholarship Award is distributed to students focusing on energy efficiency and sustainability. Xiaoyu Liang
STAFF AWARDS S. EARL BROWN OUTSTANDING STAFF This annual award recognizes staff members in the Department of Geography who demonstrate excellence in overall job performance above and beyond their prescribed duties and responsibilities, advancing the department’s research, teaching and faculty foci. Additional consideration will be given to staff members who enhance the profile of the department through their work and connections. Nancy Coscia ARTS AND SCIENCES STAFF EXCELLENCE AWARD This award recognizes staff who have demonstrated outstanding and substantial service to the College of Arts and Sciences. Suzanne M.S. Mikos
geography.osu.edu | 21
UPCOMING EVENTS IN 2019-2020 OCTOBER 10-11 East Lakes Division of the American Associate of Geographers (ELDAAG) will take place at Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, Michigan. Ohio State geographers will be in attendance to present their research, engage in professional networking activities, and broaden their educational experience. OCTOBER 18 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place’ Youjeong Oh, Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin, Dept. Of Asian Studies 1080 Derby Hall OCTOBER 25 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘Picturing Ruin in Urban China’ Max Woodworth, Associate Professor, The Department of Geography, The Ohio State University 1080 Derby Hall NOVEMBER 12-15 GeoWeek: Ohio State and the Department of Geography participates in Geography Awareness Week in conjunction with National Geographic. GEOWeek will be “Igniting the Spirit ofExploration”, presenting a graduate student research forum, GEOguesser, and the Geography Bowl, and GIS Day on November 13. Look for more information at geography.osu.edu/geoweek. NOVEMBER 15 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘Urbanization and Climate in China’ Liang Chen, Research Climate Scientist, Illinois State Water Survey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 1080 Derby Hall DECEMBER 13 Department of Geography Awards and Graduation Ceremony: The department would like to celebrate the achievements of our graduate and undergraduate students during the course of their program studies. JANUARY 24 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘Air Quality, Climate, and Water Implications of Energy and Agriculture Development’ Yue Qin, Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, The Ohio State University 1080 Derby Hall JANUARY 31 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘Racial Capitalism and the Politics of Global Urbanization: A View from Mumbai’ Sapana Doshi, Associate Professor, Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, University of California, Merced 1080 Derby Hall
22 | DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
FEBRUARY 21 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia ‘What Drives the Performance of Collaboration Networks: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Urban Water Governance in China’ Hongtao Yi, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University, John Glenn College of Public Affairs FEBRUARY 28 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia Edward J. ‘Ned’ Taaffe Lecture: ‘The Infrastructure of Value’ Vinay Gidwani, Professor, Geography & Global Studies, University of Minnesota 1080 Derby Hall MARCH Gamma Theta Upsilon, International Geography Honor Society Induction Ceremony APRIL 3 Department of Geography Colloquium Series – Urban Asia Arthur H. Robinson Lecture: ‘Big Geo-Data for an Urban China: Methods and Applications’ Yu Liu, Professor, Peking University Institute of Remote Sensing & GIS 1080 Derby Hall APRIL 6-10 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting: The Geography Department will, once again, be holding our annual alumni event. The date and time for this will be determined at a later date. Please sign up for our weekly update and newsletter notification for your early RSVP email [geography.osu.edu/dept/connect]. See you in Denver! MAY 1 Department of Geography Awards and Graduation Ceremony: The department would like to celebrate the achievements of our graduate and undergraduate students during the course of their program studies.
COLLOQUIUM SERIES Each year, the Department of Geography invites individuals at the top of their respective fields to give engaging and innovative lectures. For the academic year 2019–2020, the Department of Geography will host a speaker series under the thematic heading of Urban Asia to showcase the latest in research on urban questions in Asia and to mark the department’s continued engagement with this globally ascendant region. Learn more at geography.osu.edu/dept/colloquium
SUPPORT THE DEPARTMENT Dear Alumni and Friends,
Mail to:
Please consider making a gift or donation to the Department of Geography. Each and every gift makes a tangible difference in the lives of our students and faculty. All gifts are tax deductible as permitted by law.
DIANE CARDUCCI Department of Geography The Ohio State University 1036 Derby Hall 154 North Oval Mall Columbus, OH 43210-1208
YES, I WANT TO SUPPORT
THE DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY
DEPARTMENT AND RESEARCH FUNDS Geography Discretionary Funds – 303607 Provides support for undergraduate and faculty recruiting and to supplement endowments in the department Great Basin Research Fund – 316586 Supports research activities in association with Atmospheric and Climatic Studies in both the Great Basin and beyond
fund # through an annual pledge of: $2,500* $1,000 *presidents club Other $
Graduate Geography Student Support – 312979 To provide support for graduate students
John N. Rayner Alumni, Faculty & Friends of Geography Fund – 602493 To provide scholarship and prizes in the Department of Geography
Quarterly
Annually
I would like more information about naming opportunities.
The Lawrence A. Brown Faculty Fellow Fund – 652475 To provide an assistant or associate professor with a oneyear designation as a Lawrence A. Brown Faculty Fellow
I would like more information about estate and planned giving. Please phone me at: (
)
Payment options: To make a gift or pledge return this form or complete an online form at giveto.osu.edu. Check payable to The Ohio State University Credit card payment
Exp. date Signature
FACULTY FUNDS
years
Enclosed is my payment in full
Charles Clifford Huntington Memorial Fund – 603342 To award an outstanding student in geography Lewis Family Scholarship – 644161 Provides scholarships to undergraduates enrolled in ASC studying in the Department of Geography and have a minimum 3.0 GPA. Preference to candidates majoring in geographic information science with interest in cartography
for
This is a one time gift of $
Gary & Connie Sharpe Geography Research Innovations Commons – 315621 Provides resources for the renovation of designated space in Derby Hall and purchase of technology
STUDENT FUNDS
Bill me: Monthly
$500
My employer will match my gift. Name of Employer Phone (
)
Non-Profit Org. U. S. Postage PAID Columbus, OH Permit No. 711
DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHY 1036 Derby Hall 154 N. Oval Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210 geography.osu.edu
SHOWCASING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH The Denman Undergraduate Research Forum, an annual judged research presentation opportunity at Ohio State, showcases the very best research and creative activities of Ohio State undergraduates. Last year, two students from the Department of Geography participated.
MAEVE SCULLY BA in Geography: Urban, Regional, and Global Studies (graduated in spring 2019) Advisor: Darla Munroe Project Title: Visual Methods of Geographic Analysis of Gentrification in Columbus, Ohio
PATRICK CLEARY BA in Economics with Geography: Urban, Regional, and Global Studies as 2nd major (graduated in spring 2019) Advisor: Joel Wainwright Project Title: Looking Through the Inverted Periscope: Arrighi, Galeano, and Zapatista World Systems Theory